Cardboard – Concept No 1

The first concept I created for for cardboard is based on the use of photography to record and validate that something in the past had existed. I selected the following sentence “From this, moment that the work becomes the trace of a movement, of a journey, it appeals to the idea of fate.” Barthes (p 151) as my source of inspiration. In the text he is discussing the work of Beethoven however I have decided to take the journey metaphor literally for this image. Cardboard man is walking towards his fate. To create this image I had two challenges the first was to represent the journey towards his fate and second to portray the fate without having a cardboard man in the image.

We have not seen a Yeti a mythical animal that is believed to live in the Himalayan Mountains but photographic evidence of its footprints have been used to allude to existence in images by explorers such as Eric Shipton in 1951. The photographs went to auction in 2014 as reported by the Daily Mail. My first photographic element was to record cardboard man’s footprints using cardboard.

The second element for my image was to record the fate of cardboard man, which I decided to base on the chalk outline used to record the place of death at a crime scene .

Having selected my photographic elements it was time to create my image.

The image was deliberately shot without a horizon to ensure the reader focused on the two key elements in the frame the footprints and the outline.

During a session on Thursday to review images from the cardboard Photograph Interlude it was interesting to listen to the interpretation of the image. the first was that it lacked reference points to determine scale until I mentioned that the footprints were in fact toilet rolls which immediately gives the reader an idea of scale. The second interesting observation was the question of orientation was the outline of the man on a wall of in fact on the ground. The first reading could make one think of Harry Potter walking through the wall at King’s Cross station to gain access to platform 9 3/4 in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.” (chapter 6). The second reading of the image is the outline is on the ground the footprints are as cardboard man falls to his fate which is probably a less plausible reading for the image.